green laced across with roads marked in orange and blue. Denver showed up as a knot of development where major highways intersected. The map was pre-flood, but the shoreline of the great inland sea that had washed across the eastern United States, now reaching as far as a line from the Dakotas down to the Gulf, was still too far east to have shown up on this map.
Zane looked at her doubtfully. “So why would you build a space center in Colorado at all?”
“The government would need to keep it close to Denver to make sure it was safe.” Her father talked this sort of thing through with her. As the flood bit away at the remaining land area, more roads and rail routes were cut, more people joined the homeless throngs that washed back and forth across the high ground, and the government’s political control was weakening. The news bulletins were full of growing tension over a would-be separatist Mormon state in Utah; there was even talk of war. “Somewhere in Colorado. But where?”
“High up enough that it won’t flood before 2040.”
“But that still leaves a lot of choice.” She thought about where Cape Canaveral had been situated—on the Atlantic shore, the eastern coastline of America. Why there? For safety reasons, she remembered. You always launched rockets eastward, to get a boost from Earth’s own rotation. Launching from Canaveral had meant that any failure would result in a rocket, flying east, falling harmlessly into the sea. Now the same principle surely applied. “Look,” she said, stabbing a finger at the map. “Gunnison. Twenty-three hundred meters above the old sea level. In 2040 it will be close to the eastern coast of the surviving land. A safe place to launch east.” What else? She dug her handheld out of her bag and quickly interrogated it. “The town’s on a valley bottom, so plenty of flatland. There’s an airport nearby, so you have transport links, and this reservoir, the Blue Mesa, can provide water. And it’s a college town, so there’s a population of workers already in place—”
Harry Smith approached them. “Actually that took you only four minutes. Yes, that’s why Gunnison, Colorado, is going to host the world’s latest, and maybe last, space launch facility. Twenty years ago you’d never have believed it. Good bit of deduction, Ms. Groundwater. OK, you’re free to go.”
They got to their feet, handed back the atlas, and ran for the stairs.
“And, Ms. Groundwater— don’t be late again. Next time you might find somebody else sitting in your seat . . .”
12
W hen they got to the classroom, in the back of a large, emptied-out chamber labeled “Edge of the Wild” on the museum’s second floor, Liu Zheng was in full flow. He stood before an interactive whiteboard, rapidly assembling and erasing graphics, and allowing annotated equations to scroll by. “The essence of an Alcubierre warp bubble is simple,” he said. “Conceptually at any rate. You have an isolated region of spacetime.” This was marked as a circle on his two-dimensional diagrams, but he mimed a sphere with closed hands. “Your spaceship is in this zone here . . .”
As he talked, a dozen kids all about Holle’s age sat at tables before him, and worked at handhelds and laptops, muttering and murmuring in pairs and threes. Zane led Holle to an empty table. As she passed, the students glanced at her indifferently and looked away.
Holle recognized a few of the kids in here, including Kelly Kenzie, a friend or maybe rival since they were little. Kelly was locked in intense conversation with a red-haired boy who looked a bit older. There were Cora Robles and Susan Frasier working in a huddle, two bright, pretty girls together. And Thomas Windrup and Elle Strekalov, sitting so close they might have been conjoined twins, as they had been all the way through grade school. Elle was a lot better-looking than Thomas, and the class gossips didn’t know why they stayed together. There was a lot of
Zane looked at her doubtfully. “So why would you build a space center in Colorado at all?”
“The government would need to keep it close to Denver to make sure it was safe.” Her father talked this sort of thing through with her. As the flood bit away at the remaining land area, more roads and rail routes were cut, more people joined the homeless throngs that washed back and forth across the high ground, and the government’s political control was weakening. The news bulletins were full of growing tension over a would-be separatist Mormon state in Utah; there was even talk of war. “Somewhere in Colorado. But where?”
“High up enough that it won’t flood before 2040.”
“But that still leaves a lot of choice.” She thought about where Cape Canaveral had been situated—on the Atlantic shore, the eastern coastline of America. Why there? For safety reasons, she remembered. You always launched rockets eastward, to get a boost from Earth’s own rotation. Launching from Canaveral had meant that any failure would result in a rocket, flying east, falling harmlessly into the sea. Now the same principle surely applied. “Look,” she said, stabbing a finger at the map. “Gunnison. Twenty-three hundred meters above the old sea level. In 2040 it will be close to the eastern coast of the surviving land. A safe place to launch east.” What else? She dug her handheld out of her bag and quickly interrogated it. “The town’s on a valley bottom, so plenty of flatland. There’s an airport nearby, so you have transport links, and this reservoir, the Blue Mesa, can provide water. And it’s a college town, so there’s a population of workers already in place—”
Harry Smith approached them. “Actually that took you only four minutes. Yes, that’s why Gunnison, Colorado, is going to host the world’s latest, and maybe last, space launch facility. Twenty years ago you’d never have believed it. Good bit of deduction, Ms. Groundwater. OK, you’re free to go.”
They got to their feet, handed back the atlas, and ran for the stairs.
“And, Ms. Groundwater— don’t be late again. Next time you might find somebody else sitting in your seat . . .”
12
W hen they got to the classroom, in the back of a large, emptied-out chamber labeled “Edge of the Wild” on the museum’s second floor, Liu Zheng was in full flow. He stood before an interactive whiteboard, rapidly assembling and erasing graphics, and allowing annotated equations to scroll by. “The essence of an Alcubierre warp bubble is simple,” he said. “Conceptually at any rate. You have an isolated region of spacetime.” This was marked as a circle on his two-dimensional diagrams, but he mimed a sphere with closed hands. “Your spaceship is in this zone here . . .”
As he talked, a dozen kids all about Holle’s age sat at tables before him, and worked at handhelds and laptops, muttering and murmuring in pairs and threes. Zane led Holle to an empty table. As she passed, the students glanced at her indifferently and looked away.
Holle recognized a few of the kids in here, including Kelly Kenzie, a friend or maybe rival since they were little. Kelly was locked in intense conversation with a red-haired boy who looked a bit older. There were Cora Robles and Susan Frasier working in a huddle, two bright, pretty girls together. And Thomas Windrup and Elle Strekalov, sitting so close they might have been conjoined twins, as they had been all the way through grade school. Elle was a lot better-looking than Thomas, and the class gossips didn’t know why they stayed together. There was a lot of
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